University education in South Africa, at least this year is on a knife edge, as the restive conditions at these institutions of higher learning ebb back and forth threatening the loss of an academic year and undermining a crucial cog of our system of human capital development.
In its path the restive conditions create: first, a university intake crisis for at least the next five years; second, it is disruptive to the supply side of labour markets; and third, it puts those on the cusp of potentially reaching a better life in indeterminate abeyance. These are three among a myriad of consequences that the protracted #FeesMustFall campaign has on the country.
To provide context and ground of the discourse, an important point of reference is the National Development Plan (NDP). In particular the NDP makes five very telling points.
First: “The NDP is a plan to unite South Africans, unleash the energies of its citizens, grow an inclusive economy, build capabilities, and enhance the capability of the state and leaders working together to solve complex problems.”
Second: “Too few South Africans work, the quality of school education for the majority is poor and our state lacks capacity in critical areas.”
Third: “There has been significant progress, but our country remains divided, with opportunity still shaped by the legacy of apartheid.”
Fourth: “In particular, young people and women are denied the opportunities to lead the lives that they desire.”
Fifth: “Our constitution obliges all of us to tackle these challenges.”
So what is the role of #FeesMustFall campaign in all this? I try to navigate the currency of our vexing paradoxes and for this I draw on evidence from the quarterly labour force survey.
None of the contestation and opinions from all sides of this vicious circle of the education discourse have denied the assertions by the NDP, yet the stalemate exacerbates this very dire situation. It is a good start.
However, arguments have at times degenerated into the nonsensical: of whether education can or cannot be free. Of course, nothing is free, and so is education. It cannot be free. Just as any good or commodity, private or public, cannot be free. The point is, however this, that any youthful person who acquitted him or herself at high school to join tertiary education should not be denied the right of passage into such an institution, whether from a rich or poor family.
As society we need to confirm this commitment in order to address the very all important social compact deficit that pulsates furiously and troubles our democracy. This could go a long way to foster and encourage unity in society. The students demonstrated that it is possible to unite as they joined ranks across race, family background, political affiliation and institutions of higher learning.
It was a 2010 Fifa World Cup of sorts, it was the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations of sorts and it was a 1995 Rugby World Cup of sorts. But as a society we refused to see it that way, because to us education is priority number 18 out of 20 priorities.
Future leaders
It remains, therefore, one for the million students or the seven hundred thousand or so households from which these students come, to resolve the problem and it is none of our business for the remaining 15 million households that do not have children at university. Yet what the students demonstrated has the potential of breeding a new united body of future leaders and intellectuals that will transform South Africa across race, creed, religion, political affiliation or class.
It was different from the 1976 Soweto student uprisings, which was purely a black student matter. Obviously, and with prolonged conflict and wanton destruction of property, the potential unity has begun to dissipate and has become fractious.
The vanguard spaces for potentially fostering unity in action for change crafted by those who would intellectually contribute in significant ways in solving the complex problems of our land are getting destroyed. It would be naive though to suggest even in the wildest of dreams that the students are a monolith of equality. Students come from rich and poor families, but it is true that education is the greatest equaliser. Indeed, Madiba said: “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine. That a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
These students are the future leaders.
They should learn to work together and the university is the theatre where the learning occurs. Assigning them labels of being poor or rich heightens conflict in the space where unity of learning problem-solving is crucial and this undermines the social compact potential South Africa so sorely needs to inspire its thesis of a developmental state, of healing our land, of addressing divisions of our past and of building a patriotic intelligentsia guided by the quest for knowledge and irked by the deep inequalities.
Can students pay for their education? The answer is yes, they can and they should. But only when they are graduates. They should contribute significantly to paying for both a portion of their private benefit from education while contributing with the rest of society in paying for the public good component of education.
There are some sobering facts that may shed light and inform the current discourse and what course of action may be desirable. For this I draw evidence from the quarterly labour force survey over the last seven years. At least 92 percent of graduates are employed and earn an income.
Absorption rates
Yet, there are very high levels of absorption rates for graduates in the labour market. These rates have consistently ranged on average between 82 percent and 86 percent. So the economy has the potential to create a demand pool for graduates who can pay a part of their private benefit and another for a public good so that South Africa meets the demand for the dire needs of human capital.
Students are not averse to paying for education. What they are averse to is a lived experience of extreme funding uncertainty, failure to complete their studies within the mandatory period, high dropout rates, high failure rate and exposure to expulsion from university and the severe potential to burden of debt. What the government is averse to is a lived experience of paying for youth who fail to graduate in the allocated time and the challenge of creating a space for those who freshly complete matric to also enjoy tertiary education and the benefits flowing there from for the democratic state.
The fact is that the system is constipated, costly, inefficient, ineffective, wasteful in short and cannot just breathe.
The discourse has not optimised on the potential space for paying for education, which should of necessity be squarely in society where public policy priorities and discussions belong and discuss how all graduates who work should pay tax including paying directly for their private benefit from education instead of leaving this exclusively at the doorstep of students.
Advancing student unity and not dividing them by whether they come from rich or poor families may well be the most important choice South Africa has to use to build social compacts. Students have demonstrated their propensity towards this ethos of unity and the potential for this national asset to advance the NDP.
What is needed in solving a crisis of this nature and magnitude is an adaptive rather than a technical solution.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the statistician-general of South Africa and the head of Statistics SA. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of IOL.
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